Linking high quality nursing research and practice in the north-east: emerging opportunities

Government policy drives health and social care providers to continually improve and innovate (as in the ‘High Quality Care for All’, NHS, 2008). This is particularly evident in public health, where there has recently been a multi-stakeholder commitment to developing research and practice, in the form of a £5m UKCRC award to the north-east to establish a centre of research excellence in public health (the Centre for Translational Research in Public Health, CTRPH). One aspect of the Centre is to build research capacity and there is, therefore, a considerable potential student population. In the School of Community, Health & Education Studies we address the supervision of professional doctorate students by drawing on soft systems methodology (Carr, Lhussier & Chandler 2009). At the core of practice-relevant research is the need for management of the interplay between individual students and the organisation in which they function. The Framework is influenced by Cowley’s (1995) argument of the inappropriateness of separating organisational and professional learning. In order to avoid imposing inappropriate or unnecessary divisions or barriers between practice and the research/learning environments, each professional doctorate supervision team includes a practice advisor. Tackling some of the enduring health and social needs of the UK requires new approaches to how need is understood and responded to (Department of Health 2004). Addressing health inequalities demands a research agenda that is in tune with the knowledge required by practitioners and a mechanism to make the necessary evidence base easily available and accessible to those who require it to underpin practice development. The CTRPH and the educational strategies at play in the Community, Health and Education Research Centre provide exciting opportunities for research and supervision collaboration, in a way most apt to influence practice.